Attack of the Killer Cows!

Just look at those beady eyes!

Gentle readers, are you aware that cows fart? Seemingly, they always have. In fact, according to their critics, they are almost preternaturally flatulent whereby they produce great clouds of deadly methane gas. As any environmentalist will tell you, methane gas threatens to incinerate planet earth. But even worse, these  boorish bovines also belch. No less an authority on planetary survival than Time magazine reports that, “Agriculture contributes about 40% of total global methane emissions—the bulk of which is belched from grazing livestock due to digestion of dietary carbohydrates.” 

TIME has long been the gold standard of global meteorological wisdom.

Surely the question is rhetorical.

According to CNN, “Nearly one-third of global methane emissions come from livestock and most of that from beef and dairy cows.” [In point of fact, most “beef cows” are actually boys, albeit neutered boys, who generally identify as steers–but let us not dither over archaic gender distinctions.]  Fortunately, a hero has arisen to stem the methane tide–and who else but Bill Gates?  Gates realized that cows (and steers) refuse to follow the Atkins diet, which for cattle would entail nasty implications of  cannibalism; but Gates hit upon the insight that carbohydrate intake among grazing stock can be lowered to safe levels by feeding them seaweed.  On this note, per CNN, Gates “announced an investment in the Australian start-up Rumin8, [see what they did there?] which is developing a seaweed-based feed to reduce the methane emissions cows produce through their burps and, to a lesser extent, farts.  It is always uplifting to observe entrepreneurial genius enlisted in the service of humankind. Granted, the plan to nourish cows with seaweed remains fraught with contingencies, but the crusade to cool the earth is too vital to sacrifice on the alter of crass pragmatism. 

Digesting dejecta…

The infamous cow patty.

Poop, too, is considered a  major factor in stoking our planet’s febrile condition.  Cow poop in particular cooks under a hot sun, oozing still more murderous methane.  But Bill Gates may not have to save the world with seaweed if a ‘startup’ called Windfall Bio saves it first. Windfall, which must surely have been named by an ironist, has developed a cow-poop solution using methanotrophs, (naturally occurring microbes found in soil and known to eat methane).

Just in time!

Windfall Bio’s process entails  sprinkling naturally occurring methane-gobbling microbes all over the nation’s chicken, pig and cattle farms where it converts the animal dung into organic fertilizer while simultaneously lowering methane production.  This is good news for our sweltering planet because if everybody does this at the same time all over the entire world, experts predict the process might actually cut methane emissions enough to reduce global temperatures by a half degree Celsius –by 2050.  That is if it works, which additional research suggests it may not, but keep the good thought.

Not a joke!

At first glance, reducing the earth’s temperature by a measly half degree may seem a paltry adjustment, but consider that Yahoo Finance has declared that “a half-degree drop in global temperatures represents one-third of the targeted 1.5 degrees of temperature reduction the world must hit to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.” Of course, Yahoo omitted any thoughts on what constitutes a probable baseline for planetary temperature 27 years hence–especially considering the degree to which the earth may arbitrarily warm, or, mirabile dictu, cool itself, over the upcoming two-and-a-half decades.  Put simply, how will we know if we’ve cooled the earth at all if it warms or cools unassisted during the same period?

Fortunately, lab-grown meat can be created in a petri dish by cultivating the stem cells of cows. Unfortunately, this still requires cows.

Abstinence rocks!

Naturally, none of these intricacies need enter into the equation if people  everywhere simply quit eating beef.  This, like many issues pertinent to global warming, has not escaped the attention of the afore-mentioned Bill Gates. After all, it may prove problematic to patent seaweed as a cow-chow ingredient, even as novel methods of fertilization, no matter how epochal, can be emulated without stooping to actionable shenanigans’. On the other hand, the science involved in creating artificial food is easily patented, which may be why Bill Gates is heavily invested in such fake-meat  marketers as Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods and Memphis Meats. We are lucky, we think,  that Gates’s ideals entwine so fortuitously with his  business interests, permitting him to play a doubly significant role in the quest to promote planet-saving alternatives to real food.

“No thanks!”

Chinese agrarians acquiring American farmland.

But beyond cornering the market on meat alternatives, the socially-conscious billionaire has  poured millions into the acquisition of record expanses of American farm acreage. In fact, he is buying up American farmland at rates in excess of even the Red Chinese. And rest assured his farms will  produce none of those life-threatening cow patties. Rather, they will supply the crops necessary for the production of imitation meat.

The imitation game.

Izzi Beresford, APE authoress, health writer,  thankless ingrate.

“Seems like a win win for Bill,” comments the United Kingdom’s A/P/E nutrition site. “The scary reality of the situation is, that if Gates were able to successfully influence a total dietary shift, he would not only make unbelievable sums of money but he would also have control over a huge proportion of the food system.” Author Izzi Beresford may have lost sight of Gates’s legendary selflessness, even going so far as to conclude, “Billionaires deciding how we eat? No thanks!” 

Are we at war?

Michel Martin, journalist for a small planet.

NPR typically opposes war–although on-air complaints about it abate during Democrat administrations. Far less frequent, overall, are  instances in which our state-funded radio  bothers to deny the very existence of a war. It may seem anomalous then, that Michel Martin went out of her way to do just that, but the NPR hostess made a point recently of assuring listeners that “…nobody is taking away your meat. Let’s just say that right up front.” 

“The usual suspects.”

Martin hastened to ascribe such rumor-mongering to “the usual suspects,” by which she meant “Fox News.” Apparently, the entire notion of a war on meat is silly, because “…Claims of a quote-unquote war on meat, are being pushed…in response to the Biden administration’s moves to address climate change.” If Martin is correct, it doesn’t help matters that NPR published her broadcast transcripts under the headline, “Food World Ramps Up The War On Meat,” which sounds a trifle bellicose.  Maybe some Fox News saboteurs infiltrated the NPR website undetected.

Fox News meddler hacking the NPR website. (FILE COPY)

Per Martin, the whole business results from a right-wing plot to falsely suggest that “President Biden’s climate plan will limit red meat eating in order to curb greenhouse gas emissions.”  Of course. the difference between a right-wing conspiracy theory and the evening news is usually about 6 months.

Starving the Third World…

A skeptic who reviewed Martin’s reassurances in tandem with the  administration’s record of autocratic impositions and facile mendacities, might be forgiven for concluding that a war on meat is exactly what is planned, but NPR remains sanguine. Martin here adds a “however,” however, with a certain adumbrative solemnity, acknowledging that  “some in the food world are taking seriously the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and the beef we consume.”  Some in the food world? If Bill Gates says it’s true, surely the methane menace is settled science. On this note, Michel Martin introduced her guest.

Mark Bittman just published a new book, Animal Vegetable Junk,  in which he advocates “more plant-forward diets” whatever that means, while quoting broadly from the 1970’s period piece, Diet For A Small Planet, which not only holds that cattle are polluting the environment, but also argues that by feeding grain to cows, Americans are starving the Third World.  Bittman expresses identical sentiments, and backs them up with simple–if awkwardly mootable–mathematics. 

Support your right to bear weenies! 

Bittman had to work himself up a bit, and required a bit of tactical guidance from hostess Martin, but he finally said the quiet part out loud, explaining that “there’s something about beef that’s connected to the same kind of rights that we associate with guns. I think it’s just – people – there are people who don’t want government to govern, to make decisions that are beneficial for all of us like reducing the number of guns in the United States would be a good thing. Reducing the amount of meat that we eat in the United States would be a good thing.” Yes, Mark, and if the purpose of government is “to make decisions that are beneficial for all of us,” why shouldn’t Biden ban meat? 

“But being as this is a .44 magnum, and the worst analogy for a frankfurter in the world…”

This is the point at which, even if Michel Martin doesn’t see any flaw in Bittman’s argument (and she gave no such indication), the latent journalist in her might raise a counterpoint, if only for integrity’s sake. But NPR was never designed to accommodate on-air disagreements (which is probably why almost nobody speaks much above a whisper).

Waiter, there ‘s a fly in my consensus!

Dr. John Clauser–just look at those beady eyes!

Of course, unplanned disruptions will occasionally assail even the most consensual of scientific consensuses. There are always troublemakers bent on callously baking the biosphere.  This very month saw the visit of John Clauser, last year’s Nobel Prize winner in physics, to the United States. What should have been an opportunity to focus top-notch scientific scrutiny on our looming planetary meltdown, collapsed owing to an untimely display of unanticipated critical thinking–long the bane of enlightened scientific conformity.  

Right-wing science!

Joe Biden detects the waftage of right-wing science.”

Dr. Clauser was invited to share his scientific insights with the always-acquisitive Joe Biden, but it didn’t go well. Biden asked Clauser what  objections he had to the administration’s climate policy.  Clauser led off with an impolitic denunciation of the administration’s crippling of US energy production to assuage “global-warming hysteria,” but the President knew bushwa when he heard it. “Sounds like right-wing science,” Biden grumped, and the meeting concluded on that note. 

Worse, after Clauser discussed his presidential snub with reporters, he added, “As much as it may upset many people, my message is: the planet is not in peril. This is good news. I believe there is no climate crisis. The alleged atmospheric CO2 and methane have a negligible effect on the climate.” 

Heretics!

Obviously, such heretical remarks caused the cognoscente no end of distress. Scientists, after all, and particularly Nobel-Prize-winning scientists, are expected to conform to fashionable science–that is, the so-called  scientific consensus regnant in media and among, globe-trotting activists and the customary Hollywood nincompoops. The drumbeat commenced immediately. Much was written and telecast to the effect that the miserable Dr. Clauser had disgraced the Nobel Committee by becoming the first Nobel Prize recipient to be a “climate denier,” whatever that is.

These critics overlooked Norwegian-American Prize winner,  Ivar  Giaever, a biophysicist who  consistently professes disdain for climate alarmism, calling it a “new religion.” The critics also pretermitted more than 1,600 additional scientists who  populate CLINTEL, (the Global Climate Intelligence Group), a collection of apostates who perversely reject the global-warming gospel.

Obviously if such treasonable scientific opinions were to prevail, it would not be long before all those belching, flatulent, dung-plopping cattle led civilization down the road to a biospheric barbeque. To obviate this, many of our nation’s wisest and  most altruistic billionaires are racing to stem the bovine tide.  The battle is uphill, since only 2 percent of the American people identify as vegetarian, but obstructive realities have never deterred visionary climatology. 

Racism!

Take it from Paris Hilton!

 The New York Times recently published an opinion piece titled “The End of Meat Is Here” in which the author outdid Mark Bittman’s gun analogy by straight-facedly arguing that meat consumption is a form of racism.  According to the Times, the majority of workers in the meat industry are “people of color” whom the Times would evidently prefer to see unemployed rather than disproportionately represented in the detestable meat trade. 

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